Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.8
By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:
The international community has reached a secret consensus to freeze the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Igor Ponomarenko, Russian political analyst, member of Russian Intelligence Network expert community told Trend Oct.8.
This tendency has turned into a kind of "sacred cow" of the international diplomacy, according to the expert.
"This doesn't rule out that a certain foreign player, including Russia, carefully tries to use the fact of confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia to reach its own geopolitical goals," he said.
Ponomarenko noted that Moscow is interested in maintaining maximum stability in the South Caucasus, since it is absolutely not ready to have a "hot spot" here as well.
"Despite the permanently strained relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia is trying to maneuver between Baku and Yerevan, seeks to preserve the balance and by all means tries to prevent the escalation of tension," he said.
The expert believes that the tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia can last for decades and such a situation meets the interests of all external players.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Edited by SI
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